This is one of the films were the billing thing gets pretty silly. Armie Hammer is The Lone Ranger, not Johnny Depp.

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Christopher Reeve didn't have top billing in Superman or Michael Keaton in Batman, IIRC, so it's not unprecedented for the lesser-known actor playing the lead character to get lower billing to a better known actor playing what is nominally a supporting character.

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Yes, and it wasn't okay then and it isn't okay now.

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It's the SGA rules, though. Unless Depp takes no billing, he has to be first.

Christopher Reeve didn't have top billing in Superman or Michael Keaton in Batman, IIRC, so it's not unprecedented for the lesser-known actor playing the lead character to get lower billing to a better known actor playing what is nominally a supporting character.

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Yes, and it wasn't okay then and it isn't okay now.

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It's the SGA rules, though. Unless Depp takes no billing, he has to be first.

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Do you mean SAG, Screen Actor's Guild? I don't think they have any rules about billing beyond actors HAVE to be billed.

Top billing is the agent's job... Where an actor is billed is something that is negotiated.

It's the SGA rules, though. Unless Depp takes no billing, he has to be first.

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Do you mean SAG

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Yeah, sorry about the typo

I don't think they have any rules about billing beyond actors HAVE to be billed.

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Haven't we had the discussion in this very thread already? Clearly you don't have to be billed since actors have chosen not to be billed. Whoopie Goldberg is Generations is the perfect example. The story is that she would have been billed first had she chosen not to be billed at all.

Clearly you don't have to be billed since actors have chosen not to be billed. Whoopie Goldberg is Generations is the perfect example. The story is that she would have been billed first had she chosen not to be billed at all.

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Still, I'm pretty certain SAG doesn't have any rules about billing... maybe, though, something about award winners? I know that in promo materials, academy award winners have to be listed as such.

And by the time she was involved with Star Trek, Goldberg had won her Oscar.

To the best of my knowledge - which is limited - this kind of billing is not a matter of SAG rules but is negotiated by the actors.

If I'm an actor who has been successfully negotiating a certain level of credit and pay in movies and I accept less than that for a given appearance when I could get more, I'm taking money out of the pockets of people like my manager and/or agent as well as giving leverage to the producers on the next project ("You worked for less for Codswallop: The Movie, didn't you? Why them and not us?"). If I'm an actor who's in demand you're not only buying my talent but my reputation. Whether Marlon Brando delivered a performance worth what he was paid for Superman, for example, is a matter of opinion; however, Richard Donner noted that signing Brando essentially got the movie made and got it the budget it needed.